Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 04th, 2012
We’re continuing on the topic of blogging with this infographic from Inboun giving some great tips on how to use your blog to market effectively.
See more our collection of social media infographics on our Pinterest boards.
Source: inboun.com via Out-Smarts on Pinterest
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 22nd, 2012
Ever wonder how men and women differ in their social media useage and their approach to online privacy? This infographic from uSamp says it all.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 14th, 2011
QR codes (or Quick Response codes), those little black and white squares that look like crosswords, 
are appearing everywhere: in magazine ads, on product labels, on bus stops, you name it. If you scan them using your smart phone you are taken to a related webpage (without having to type in the URL). I blogged about them a year or so ago and have watched with interest as they proliferate. Marketers love them but are the really resonating with their intended audience? I decided to find out.
According to a recent Comscore report, 14 million Americans scanned a QR code using their mobile device in the month of June. So people are using them but it is interesting to note that the main demographics were males aged 18-34 in the high income bracket – so be cautious in using these if your target markets differ from these. Another recent report in this CNN article in the US surveyed students and only 2 out of 10 even knew what a QR code is.
QR codes are a great marketing tool in theory but using them is far from a seamless experience. In the last week I scanned several QR codes and have been frustrated by the lack of compatibility between the QR scanner on my phone resulting in the appearance of error messages rather than taking me to the enticing, targeted websites I expected to see. Of the 10 or so codes that I scanned only one worked seamlessly to launch the intended web site – the rest I gave up waiting on and couldn’t be bothered to download another barcode app that would work.
Here’s an example: I ate out recently and saw this QR code being used in at the MAC Shack in Kerrisdale so in my quest for QR knowledge, I decided to scan it to find out what my prize would be. Sadly I never found out because the app failed to launch properly, I ended up frustrated, annoyed and hungry for more. It didn’t put me off my mac cheese thankfully (nothing could) but it did give me some food for thought.
In this case, I only wasted a few minutes tinkering around trying to get it to work but for the marketer who devised this campaign, their time in putting this together was rendered useless (I’m assuming that I wasn’t the only one that tried to scan it in vain). There are far better ways to build your audience (tried and tested ways) that work. Not only that but from a marketer’s perspective when your audience is expecting something and they don’t get it (or it fails to work), what does that say about your organisation. It’s all about the optics. If you can’t get it right then why bother wasting your audience’s time.
Sources in the telecom industry tell me that the next generation of phones will be able to scan these automatically so the problem of unstandardized apps may go away but in the meantime, marketers should give close consideration to their audience and to making sure that their QR codes work seamlessly with as many of the readers as possible. Otherwise, it might be better to consider more tried and tested methods to grow your community. Don’t get me wrong, the potential for QR Codes is huge and one day they will be a marketing tool that you can’t ignore but for now not so much.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 24th, 2010
Despite this being his busy season, Santa has been really active online again this year:’
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Follow Santa’s progress on Twitter via NORAD and his Twitter profile.
On Facebook there are several Santas - its hard to see which is the real one but NORAD is on there too keeping track of his whereabouts.
Santa now ships to Canada – oh wait, I thought he lived here: shifty You Tube promotion. Ho ho ho.
The Elf Leader shares some seasonal ditties on MySpace.
For more on Santa, check out his wikipedia listing.
Even Wikileaks is in on the act – revealing Santa’s personal documents earlier this month along with his naughty list – hope you are not on it!
And last but not least rumour has it that Santa uses an iphone app to track wish lists now.
I wonder how he finds the time.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 24th, 2010
Guest blogger Kerry Sauriol of Crunchy Carpets explains why small businesses should blog.
When I Started Blogging
A little while ago, I was attending an event held by the Enterprising Moms Network. As usual I had to explain what Crunchy Carpets was. One woman exclaimed to me that she had never gotten into blogging and Twitter and all that stuff as she just never had the time.
This got me thinking about a few responses to that statement.
If she didnt have the time, what did that say about me or the many women I know who are into blogging or social media?
The statement seemed to imply that a blog was a tool mainly for personal use: merely a hobby. Judging from the amount of women I knew at that event that were using blogging and social media as business and marketing tools, I was quite taken aback by this assumption.
Many small business owners and entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed by the thought of adding one more activity to their already demanding days. Most then want to know in concrete terms what they will get out of a blog. What their ROI (return on investment) would be.
If your company has a website, adding a blog to it is the simplest and easiest way to reach out to your customers. A blog can add a human touch to your website. It gives you the space to reach out and communicate directly with your customer base.
The biggest lesson about blogging is ….you get out of it what you put in.
Companies can struggle with the difference between marketing and communicating. With marketing, you see the results of it quickly and easily in the form of sales that stemmed from that campaign. Blogging is different. Blogging is about relationship building. This can be tough to understand when you are focused on the bottom line.
This is true for both personal and corporate blogs.
Blogging shouldnt be demanding…but quality writing is key. Poorly written copy or a blog that is just all about marketing can put off a reader/potential customer. So yes, hiring a copywriter or professional blogger might be your next step.
Blog Examples
Agoo Clothings web presence is an amazing example of taking social media and community building to the extreme. Their site is more than an online store. Their blog is a mix of promotional copy and child and family oriented copy that they feel their readers (their shoppers) will appreciate. Add their HUGE Facebook activity and the promotion they do with personal (mom bloggers) and you can call their social media presence a huge success. Agoo wants you to know that the people behind the clothing line are family people too with kids of their own and so they can share an understanding with their buyers.
Raspberry Kids, another online child focused store already has a rich and readable website, but the blog has become not only a promotional tool, but a great insight into the life of the owner/operator of the company. She shares the ups and downs of entrepreneurialship with her readers and customers. She is one of “us.”
From these two examples, you can see how well the addition of a blog to your web presence can enable your business to connect with your community.
Marketing today has a far more touchy feelly vibe to it than the days of traditional marketing, and for some this may feel frivolous, but I do firmly believe that community building, relationship building through the internet is the way to building solid business in the real world.
If you already have a company site, the addition of a blog is a simple and inexpensive step. Talk to your webmasters and they should be able to help you or talk to Out-Smarts.
If you don’t have a website, platforms like WordPress are simple and easy to set up and there are many free templates out there that can be customized without needing a degree in code. WordPress.com is a free system and their .org site is where you can set up a blog with your OWN URL and host.
If you need a writer for your blog, there are a lot of us out there!! And we are all so talented and ready to help.
About Kerry
Having discovered that children don’t give annual employee evaluations, Kerry jumped at the chance seven years ago to be a stay-at-home mom. She has found she can more than handle being called a stupid head by her two eldest and sweetly precocious children instead of being fired by her peers.
Kerry’s hold on sanity is her computer and the world of mommy bloggers. She can ignore the chaos created by three kids, three cats, a dog and patient husband and find the peace it takes to come up with her latest post at her personal site Crunchy Carpets . Apart from obsessive Tweeting and Facebooking, she can also be found haranguing people to post on her other site Wet Coast Women.
Blogging has brought her the opportunity to meet amazing people, speak on CBC Radio and be interviewed by the Globe and Mail on a few occasions.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 12th, 2010
One of the major considerations for retail store owners has always been to make sure that your shop is located in the right place and that you are doing things to attract visitors and maximise the number of feet on the street that come through your door to sample your wares. Nowadays, thanks to technology, there are online actions and activities that you can easily do to make it easier for potential customers to locate your real world store.
Have you ever tried to find a retail store that you havent been to before? You know roughly where it is but you dont know exactly which block or street its on. Off course you have, this happens all the time. The first thing you do is to try to find it using your phone but what if you cant find the store online? The answer is that you get put off and go elsewhere instead, to return (maybe) at a later date.
This blog post gives 6 tips that will help people who use the Internet to find your store but these rules can (and should) be applied to any business with a physical location.
1. Website – makes sure the address, phone number and opening hours are front and centre on your website so that visitors can find your location easily. Consider adding a page that is dedicated to helping customers find your store giving directions, maps and transit tips. The pages that contain your address should include appropriate META and keywords that people are likely to use when trying to find your store.
2. Directories – If you dont have a website yet, dont despair – you dont have to have a website to use Internet technologies to help customers find your shop (although it does help!). Instead make sure your business is listed on a few of the search directories with the biggest clout such as Yellow Pages and Yahoo Directory. Both of these are paid directories but they are worth investing in especially if you dont have a website and you want to help people find your location online. You should also consider listing your location on hyper local directories in your community – many of these are free.
3. Google Places – one of the best ways to help people find your location is to make sure it is listed in Google Places. Not only does it allow you to list your business, it also shows your business on Google Maps. Our next blog post will be all about setting up Google Places as it is without a doubt one of the most beneficial tactics you can use.
4. If you have a Facebook Page, be sure to add your location details, hours of opening and phone number to the information section of your Page so that Facebook followers can find you when they need to.
5. Make sure your business is listed on the location based social networking tools that allow clients to share when they are at their favourite outlets. By listing your business in these forums you will assist those who use these tools (and their numbers are increasing rapidly) to find you online and thus find your real world presence. Read more about location based networking in our blog post).
6. More people access the Internet these days by phone than by PC and people on street are sure to use their phone if they are trying to find your location. Consider adding a .mobi site for your website making it easier to view page contents (including location and directions) by phone.
By applying tips outlined here you can make sure that potential customers locate the address of your physical location using the Internet and thus find your store more easily: enabling the feet on the street find their way through your door.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 05th, 2010
As always there has been a lot going on in the social media arena in the past week. This is a summary of the major (and minor!) developments.
On July 28th Facebook announced that it was going to launch Facebook Questions. The tool is set to allow you to 
crowdsource the collective intelligence of the 500 million and growing Facebook user base to ask questions and get answers. Set to compete with tools like Ask, Yahoo Answers and Answerbag, you will be able to ask any question and hopefully get the right answer practically instantaneously. The functionality isn’t live yet and is only available to a small number of beta testers but to find out more you can read this Mashable post about the 5 Ways Facebook Questions can be improved.
Google waved bye bye to its Wave product which was launched late last year. At the time there was much clamoring to get on the communication and collaboration tool which was supposed to allow people to easily work together online. Unfortunately, Wave didn’t really catch on and today it is no more. In typical Google fashion though, it would appear that they are turning the failure to their advantage. On a positive note Google yesterday announced that business can now respond to reviews on Google Places. Not before time.
The Twitter fail whale was omnipresent for much of the afternoon which 
prompted diehards to take to Facebook to voice their complaints and comments and to vent to relieve their anxiety withdrawal. This leads me to conclude that the Reuters article in today’s Washington Post highlighting a study that found that social media is costing businesses in the UK billions in lost productivity, could in fact be true across the Twitter world! Twitter is back up much to the disapointment of businesses in North America who saw productivity peak in the last few hours.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, July 05th, 2010
When you subscribe to a blog or podcast or use portal like iGoogle the technology that brings the information to you is called RSS. It is a way of publishing information easily making it available to subscribers in a central on-line repository. Just like getting your newspaper delivered to your door, RSS delivers your online content to you.
Why take advantage of RSS? There are many reasons:
How to set up an RSS feed?
Once that’s done, your good to start publishing your own data feed over the web.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, June 07th, 2010
This month’s new media reasons to be cheerful include:
Enjoy!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 22nd, 2010
These days building relationships online is as important to growing your business or reputation as networking in the real world. Not only can you be more effective using social media but you can also get more done in less time.
The Internet is a great way to expand your career horizons and get to know new and influential contacts. Here are a few pointers to bear in mind when using social media to network.
1. Dont try to network in every Internet networking hub out there. Choose those where you get the biggest impact (i.e. those that your existing contacts already use, those that reflect your target audience, or those most applicable to your niche). The most popular are LinkedIn (Professional Network), Facebook (fastest growing) and Twitter but there are many networks that are industry or job specific (like Active Rain for real estate) too so take time to check them out.
2. Leverage existing on-line networks to grow new ones. I use the Out-Smarts’ Facebook Page profile to promote our Twitter account and vice versa and add more contacts in that forum
3. Promote your activity in your chosen forums by including it in business cards, profiles and on your website.
4. Use widgets. Most of the social networks allow you to widgetize a link to your profile. Add this to your site, blog etc and include widgets for other networks in your networking profiles.
5. Always remember to be professional in these forums – ask the Granny question and make sure your content is appropriate to your professional standing.
6. When you meet new contacts in the real world find then on-line and add them to your networks.
7. Trawl the friends of your friends and contacts and add those you know or those gurus in your business.
8. Dont spread yourself over to many networks or allow them to suck up your time. Schedule it into your day.
9. Join groups. Facebook and LinkedIn both offer groups. Join applicable ones and gain access to more people in your field.
10. Participate in the right forums. These should relate to your industry or market and to those of your prospects.
11. Ask and answer questions and use your status to attract new contacts.
12. Blogs can be a great way to build your network too. If you have a blog, always follow up with people who leave comments to connect with possible prospects and peers.
13. If you don’t have a blog then use blog comments as a forum to connect with influential bloggers in your industry, to build awareness of what you do and to add value for their visitors in turn.
